Artist rendition of Carl Feigenbaum, from "Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation", 2nd edition.

CARL FERDINAND FEIGENBAUM: An
Old Suspect Resurfaces

By Wolf Vanderlinden

Murderer Carl Ferdinand Feigenbaum
spent his last night on earth in prayer with Father Creeden, Sing Sing
Penitentiary’s resident Priest, and Father Bruder, of the Poughkeepsie Catholic
church where he was to be buried. He received the last rites just before
breakfast, then made out his will in which he directed that his property in
Cincinnati, reportedly a house and a lot, be sold and that the proceeds, along
with money in a German bank in New York, be given to his sister Magdalena Strohband,
a widow, living in “Ganbickelheim, Alzel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany,”1 with the exception of $90 to be used for
his funeral expenses. Warden Omar Van Leuven Sage was made the executor.

At 11:10 on the morning of Monday the 27th of April, 1896,
Feigenbaum was told that his time had come. Walking with the two Reverend
Fathers he was taken from his cell and led to the death chamber. Before sitting
on the uncomfortable wooden chair he kissed the crucifix he carried and handed
it to Father Bruder. He sat without any urging and took off his glasses and
handed them to Bruder, asking that they be buried with him. While the straps
were being fastened he kissed Warden Sage’s hand and shook the hands of
Fathers Creeden and Bruder as well as the hand of the man who was there to kill
him, State Electrician Davis.

The prisoner was quickly belted into
the chair, the electrodes attached to the base of his brain and the calf of his
right leg, and, after Dr. R.T. Irvine, the prison physician, gave the okay, the
Warden signalled to Davis to
turn on the current.

The first shock of 1,820 volts was
given at 11:16 and lasted for
thirty seconds before being gradually reduced to 300 volts, a level which was
held for 40 seconds. The current was then turned off for a few seconds before a
second shock of 1,820 volts was administered at 11:17:45 and held till 11:18.

Drs. Irvine and John Wilson Gibbs, who
had held the watch timing the length at which the voltage was applied, examined
the body and pronounced Feigenbaum dead at 11:18:30.

It was reported in at least one
newspaper 2 that the two then
invited the other physicians, who were there to observe the execution, to come
forward and examine the body in order to obtain a consensual medical opinion
that the prisoner was indeed dead, this after what was considered some
horrifically botched executions using the still fairly new method of
electrocution. After several minutes of examination, the paper stated, one or
two of the doctors expressed the thought that although the man was not alive
perhaps he wasn’t quite dead. To satisfy this punctilious minority the current
was supposed to have been turned on again at 21:25 for a space of three seconds at full
voltage. After this, Carl Feigenbaum was pronounced well and truly dead.

This might have been an end to the
matter and the name Carl Feigenbaum lost to history except that as Feigenbaum’s
body was being wheeled into the Sing Sing Death House’s autopsy room, his lawyer,
William Sanford Lawton, gave an interview with a reporter from the New York
Advertiser in which he stated that it was his belief that his ex-client was
actually the notorious London murderer Jack the Ripper.

The Advertiser knew that it was
on to a good thing and sent a press release out on the wire hyping the coming
interview. This announcement caused a brief sensation which was reported in
newspapers all over North America. However, as the world moved on to other concerns, the story
quickly died and was largely forgotten.

Now, however, with the release of the
paperback issue of Trevor Marriott’s book Jack the Ripper The 21st
Century Investigation 3,
William Sanford Lawton has a supporter in his belief that Carl Feigenbaum was
actually the nameless killer who stalked the streets of Whitechapel in the
Autumn of 1888.

Who was Carl Feigenbaum? Why did his
own lawyer believe his client to be a vicious serial killer? What evidence has
convinced Marriott that he has found the truth behind the greatest murder
mystery of all time? Was Carl Ferdinand Feigenbaum actually Jack the Ripper?

Let’s take a closer look and see if we
can answer some of these questions.

Carl
Ferdinand Feigenbaum

“I always considered him a cunning
fellow, surrounded by a great deal of mystery, and his life history was never
found out.” 4

This revealing admission by Vernon M.
Davis, the Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted Feigenbaum, goes right to
the heart of the matter: not much is known about Feigenbaum’s life and
antecedents and there are discrepancies with what little we do know.

To begin with his name wasn’t Carl
Feigenbaum but, apparently, Anton (or Carl or Karl) Zahn (possibly Zahm or,
according to Marriott, possibly Strohband). Why he changed it to Feigenbaum is
unclear although he appears to have had numerous aliases and seems to have
changed his name frequently 5.

His 1894 admission form to Sing Sing
Prison describes him as 54 years of age, 5 feet 4 inches in height, 126 pounds
in weight with a medium complexion, dark brown hair (thin on top), small grey
deep set eyes, a high and heavily arched forehead and a large red nose with
pimples. Although it isn’t mentioned in the form Feigenbaum had a mustache in
drawings of him made during his trial and one report stated that he had at
times sported a beard. Beyond the official prison “check list” of
characteristics, he was described by one newspaper as “a little, wrinkled
old fellow, shabbily dressed.” 6

He was born around the year 1840,
possibly in Karlsruhe, Southern Germany, near the French border 7. This was, at least, one of his claims.
Marriott points out that a witness at Feigenbaum’s trial stated that Feigenbaum
had said that he had been born instead in Capitolheim, Germany, although
Marriott can find no mention of any town with this name.

Feigenbaum also said that he had two
sisters, one a widow – Magdalena Strohband, and a brother living in Germany. He would later state that he had
a brother named John, who may or may not have been the brother in Germany, who was living in Brooklyn, New York. This, at least, appears to be true and Feigenbaum’s brother
visited him in prison on the night before his execution before speaking briefly
to the press.

He may or may not have been married,
telling different people different things at different times, and he may or may
not have had children.

He was a sailor for some unknown part
of his life, perhaps all of it. His lawyer, Lawton, stated “he had been working for many years as fireman on the
Atlantic liners, sometimes on the Bremen, sometimes on the White Star, and at others on the French and Inman
lines.” 8
Feigenbaum’s brother also told the press that in May, 1891, his brother shipped
on a “Bremen boat” and remained as part of the crew until early 1892 at which time he
gave up the sea. Whether this was the date when Feigenbaum started his new life
in America or not is unclear.

Lawton stated “He ceased to follow the sea about six years ago.” 9 i.e. around 1890. Officially, however, it
seems that Feigenbaum was thought to have come to the U.S. in 1891; at least
this is what the judge in the appellate court stated, based on information
presumably gathered by the police and prosecution. Assuming, however, that Feigenbaum’s
brother wasn’t lying in order to protect him, the rough date of “early 1892”
would have to be given some credence. In addition, as there seems to be no
record of Feigenbaum, or Zahn, having landed legally in the United States, it is likely that he simply
walked off his ship in the U.S.,
possibly in the Port of New York, and stayed.

What Carl Feigenbaum was actually
doing in the US between his
arrival in the early 1890’s and the murder of Mrs. Juliana Hoffman on the 1st of September, 1894, is unclear.
While under arrest he said that he was a gardener, and claimed that this had
been his job back in Germany,
although this does not appear to be true. Also, his admission sheet for Sing Sing
Prison lists his occupation as “Florist.” Moreover, he told Mrs. Hoffman that
he had just lost his job as a gardener on Long Island but had found a job as a florist in New
York, although this was a lie. He appears, however,
to have worked in this field on an itinerant basis as he traveled around the United States. His brother seems to
confirm this stating “I saw and knew so little of him, that I do not know
where he went in the last few years. I know he was in Illinois and Wisconsin, but I don’t know – in
fact, after he took to gardening, he was all over the West, and traveled a
great deal.” 10
Feigenbaum’s movements only become clearer around the time he murdered Mrs.
Hoffman in the early morning of Saturday, 1 September,
1894.

The
Murder of Mrs. Juliana Hoffman.

Mrs. Hoffman, a 56 year old widow,
lived with her son Michael, aged 16, in two “miserable” rooms – a front room
which overlooked the street and a back room which overlooked a yard – above a
store at 544 East Sixth Street. The two came to the United
States from Budapest, Hungary, about
the year 1892 and were living precariously off what little money Michael’s
wages provided. Desperately poor, mother and son decided to earn a little extra
money by renting out their back room, furnished, to a boarder and so a small
sign which advertised this fact was placed in one of their two front windows.
Mrs. Hoffman’s first lodger, unfortunately, turned out to be Carl Feigenbaum.
He would also be her last lodger.

Feigenbaum,
who was supposed to have lost his gardening job on Long Island in late July or
early August of 1894, said that he had tramped through the country side doing
odd jobs and, upon arriving in New York City, was sleeping rough on the benches
in Tompkins Square Park, only a block from the Hoffman’s apartment. On
Wednesday, 29th of August, he answered the Hoffman’s sign
advertising a room for rent. Although he had no money he told the Hoffmans that
he had been promised a new job at a florist’s shop and that he would be able to
pay them his rent – a dollar a week plus 8 cents for breakfast each day – as
soon as he was paid on Saturday, the 1st of September. Mrs. Hoffman trusted
the out of work German gardener and allowed him to stay.

On the
evening of Friday, 31st of August, the Hoffmans and Feigenbaum were
in the front room of the tiny apartment when Mrs. Hoffman left to go and buy
some bread for supper. Before leaving she went to a closet to get a small
change purse which she kept there and when she returned she replaced the purse
in the unlocked closet. At around 10 o’clock Feigenbaum went into his room for
the night and soon after the Hoffman also retired, Mrs. Hoffman sleeping on a
lounge near one of the two front windows and her son on a couch at the foot of,
and at right angles to, her bed.

Sometime soon
after midnight Michael Hoffman
was awakened by a scream. Looking over he saw his mother partly raised out of
her bed while Feigenbaum stood over her with a long carving knife in his hand.
The young boy first kicked at the intruder and then sprang from his bed and
attacked Feigenbaum from behind. Feigenbaum, however, merely turned his
attention towards the boy and came at him with the knife. Seeing that he was
powerless against the armed lodger Hoffman was only able to escape probable
death by climbing out a window and onto the cornice over the shop front. From
this dangerous perch he started screaming for help.

With the boy
out of the way, Feigenbaum returned to Mrs. Hoffman and stabbed her in the left
side of her neck, then drew the knife forward to the right some six inches, severing
her jugular vein.11 Her son,
looking in through the window, saw Feigenbaum strike his mother with the knife
then saw his mother slowly rise and attempt to struggle towards him but fell to
the floor before she had gone a half dozen steps.

The murderer,
meanwhile, fled back to his room. Opening the window he was able to climb onto
the roof of a shed or outhouse and climb down to the yard where an alleyway led
to the street. There was a pump inside the yard and Feigenbaum was able to stop
and quickly wash his hands. Meanwhile Michael Hoffman’s shouts of “murder,
police” had alerted the local beat cop as well as several neighbours who all
arrived just as Feigenbaum, with no jacket, hat or shoes, emerged from the
alley. Faced with the excited crowd he attempted to run but was quickly
captured. After a search, a bloody knife was found in the alleyway.

Feigenbaum
was returned to the Hoffman’s apartment, perhaps so that his victim could
identify him, but Juliana Hoffman was, if not dead, then unconscious with death
shortly following. Michael Hoffman, however, was very much alive and was able
to positively identify the lodger as the man who killed his mother right in
front of his eyes. He also pointed out to the police that both the door to the
closet where his mother kept her purse and the purse itself were open but that
they were both closed when they had gone to bed. Robbery thus seemed to be the
obvious motive. The tramp gardener was arrested and taken to the First Avenue
Station House and locked in a cell.

Feigenbaum
was taken from First Avenue to appear before Justice Simms in the Essex Market
Police Court later that same day. Also present was Michael Hoffman who
attempted to grab the prisoner by the throat but was prevented from doing so by
the quick actions of the court officers. When asked to plead Feigenbaum, in a
firm tone of voice, declared that he was not guilty of the murder. His defence
was childishly simple: he did not commit the murder, he said, because his
friend, one Jacob Weibel, had.

He claimed
that he had met Weibel when he was tramping through the countryside and the two
of them had quickly become friends and travelled together. He knew that Mrs.
Hoffman wouldn’t approve of two men sharing her room without either one paying
so he had said nothing about Weibel to the Hoffmans. He claimed that Weibel
would slip into the room to sleep at night and would be gone by morning. Weibel
must have been the murderer and had attacked the Hoffmans while he, Feigenbaum
had slept. What had happened to this man? He had disappeared “like a flash”
when Michael Hoffman started yelling for help. What were you doing in the alley
after the murder? I was just going to look for Weibel. “My God!”
Feigenbaum exclaimed, “had I known that the man was such a scoundrel I would
not have permitted him to be near me for a moment.” 12

No one was
convinced by this convenient argument and Feigenbaum was remanded without bail
for examination on Monday 3rd of September.

Carl
Feigenbaum eventually went to trial on the 26th of October, 1894, in
front of Recorder Frederick Smyth, the same judge in charge of the Ameer Ben
Ali trial in 1891. He was defended by two lawyers: Lawton and Hugh O. Pentecost while the prosecution consisted of Assistant
District Attorneys Vernon M. Davis and Stephen J. O'Hare.

He stubbornly, even insanely, stuck to
the story that he was innocent and that Jacob Weibel had murdered Mrs. Hoffman.
Against this futile defence was the evidence that the murder weapon appeared to
have belonged to him and that blood was seen on one of his hands when he was
being booked at First Avenue. He was also shown to be a thief and con artist
with many aliases but whose real name appeared to be Zahn. All of this evidence
was secondary, however, to the testimony of Michael Hoffman who identified
Feigenbaum as the man who murdered his mother. In what was almost the
definition of an open and shut case Feigenbaum was found guilty and sentenced
to death. Lawton and Pentecost,
however, kept up a desperate fight for the life of their client.

The lawyers first motioned for a new
trial during their clients sentencing hearing but it was denied by Recorder
Smyth. Next they applied at the Appellate Court for a retrial but the appellate
court judge felt that there were no grounds for an appeal. They then tried to
have his death sentence commuted by reason of insanity.13 This tactic, at least, stayed the
execution while the matter was taken under advisement.

Eventually the lawyers efforts were
rewarded when on the 5th of March, 1896, the Governor appointed the
noted alienist, Dr. Carlos F. Macdonald, to examine and report on the question
of Feigenbaum’s sanity 14. On
the 19th of March Macdonald finished his report and declared Carl
Feigenbaum to be sane.

With all legal options exhausted
Feigenbaum was executed on the 27th of April, 1896, the 19th
man to sit in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.

William
S. Lawton’s Theory.

No sooner was Feigenbaum declared dead
then William Sanford Lawton stated that “I Believe that Carl Feigenbaum,
whom you have just seen put to death in the electric chair, can easily be
connected with the Jack-the-Ripper murders in Whitechapel, London.”
15 He added “I will stake
my professional reputation that if the police will trace this man's movements
carefully for the last few years their investigations will lead them to London and to Whitechapel.” 16

Lawton described himself as the only man Feigenbaum would trust and he
based his theory, he said, on a confession that his client made to him one
night. Feigenbaum told him “I have for years suffered from a singular
disease, which induces an all absorbing passion. This passion manifests itself
in a desire to kill and mutilate every woman who falls in my way. At such times
I am unable to control myself.” 17

Lawton was so startled, he said, that he at first didn’t know what
to do. Mulling over the confession, however, led him to wonder about the Jack
the Ripper murders in London and any possible connection with his client. He stated that
he looked up the dates of the London murders and then selected two before
asking Feigenbaum confidentially: “Carl, were you in London from this date
to that one,” naming the selected dates.

The lawyer
decided to dig deeper and by checking Feigenbaum’s “record” he was able to
ascertain that Feigenbaum had travelled all over the US and Europe at a time
when several Ripper-like murders were reported in those same locations and that
he had been in Wisconsin during a series of mutilation murders of women there.
He then claimed that he communicated with London and was able to verify that Feigenbaum was there during the
Whitechapel murders. Eventually Lawton put the question to the tramp gardener whether he was actually
responsible for London’s East End murders. Feigenbaum’s reply,
according to the lawyer, was that “the Lord was responsible for his acts and
that to Him only could he confess.” 19

Lawton also offered additional proof of his theory, stating that
Feigenbaum put on an act which made him seem simple-minded and even imbecilic.
As he stood in front of the judge during his arraignment, for example, he
punched himself in the head and breast while exclaiming over and over “How
foolish of me to trust a stranger. How foolish of me to trust a stranger.”
In reality, Lawton said, his
client was “crafty” and very intelligent. Lawton also pointed out that although Feigenbaum acted as if he were a
penniless tramp he actually left money and property in his will and he paid $90
for his own funeral arrangements.

He was also, so the lawyer claimed,
able to converse knowledgably on such topics as surgery and dissection.
Feigenbaum would lapse into silence, however, if he was asked directly whether
he had any practical understanding of these subjects.

Lawton also believed that the murder of
Mrs. Hoffman was a botched Ripper attack rather than an attempted robbery and
that his client had been unable to begin mutilating the body because of Michael
Hoffman’s screams for help. He also pointed out that one expert had told him
that there were traces of old blood on Feigenbaum’s knife, evidence, he
believed, which connected his client to some earlier murder. The fact that
Feigenbaum seemed to fit at least part of the description of the murderer of
Carrie Brown, known as “Shakespeare,” in the East River Hotel in the Lower East
Side of New York in 1891, and had also murdered Mrs. Hoffman under similar
circumstances, also pointed, in Lawton’s mind, to the conclusion that his
client was the notorious Jack the Ripper.

Lawton even had some support in his theory
from Assistant District Attorney Vernon M. Davis, who had prosecuted
Feigenbaum, who stated “If it were proved that Feigenbaum was ‘Jack the
Ripper’ it would not greatly surprise me” 20

In the end Lawton summed up his ex-client with theses
words:

“The man was a devil. The motive
for the crime was his frightful desire for mutilation.” 21

Trevor
Marriott’s Theory.

It is important here to understand
Trevor Marriott’s theory about the identity of Jack the Ripper as it first
appeared in his 2005 hardcover book Jack the Ripper: The 21st
Century Investigation 22 before
looking at his case against Feigenbaum.

Marriott first investigated, then
rejected, eleven of the more famous Ripper candidates. He then laid out his
theory beginning with the statement that “I’ve always believed that, should
the truth ever come out, the killer would be revealed as someone who did not
fall under suspicion at the time and has not been mentioned by any researcher
to date.” He then states “For a long time I’ve suspected that Jack the
Ripper may have been a merchant seaman.” 23

This, then, is the heart of Marriott’s
theory, that before each murder the Ripper came into London on board a merchant ship and then sailed off again while Scotland
Yard was left groping in the darkened Whitechapel streets searching for a
killer who was many miles away.

Added to this was the observation that
London’s docks were close to Whitechapel; a seaman who docked in London many
times would probably know the territory of Whitechapel and Spitalfields; the
murderer was said to have had the appearance of a sailor; he may have had his
own cabin on board ship to return to in order to clean himself and gaps in the
dates of the murders could be explained by the exigencies of a sailors’ work
and life. Marriott also mentions the newspaper article which appeared in the New
York Sun, on the 6th of February, 1889, which reported a series of Ripper-like murders in Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua, in Central
America. These could be explained by the Ripper being
a merchant seaman who simply changed lines and now sailed from Europe to the Americas.

Marriott turned his attentions to all
ships that were in dock during the dates of the murders and then, for reasons
that are not very clear, he zeroed in on a group of small German merchant
vessels from Bremen and Hamburg. He found that ships of the Norddeutscher
Lloyd Line, which sailed out of Bremen,were in port during all the dates covered by the
Whitechapel murders and that one, the Reiher, was in port on five of the
eight dates. Ships from Hamburg
were in port during all but one of the dates, that of the murder of Francis
Coles on the 13th of February, 1891. He also found a Ripper-like murder that had occurred in Flensburg, a German port city close to the
Danish border, in October, 1889. Marriott states that ships from Bremen docked here as well.

Unfortunately, what with the passage
of time and problems caused by incomplete records, Marriott could not identify
and name a plausible suspect and so his book ended with a question mark.
However, the type of man Marriott suspected was clear. He was a German merchant
seaman who was probably unmarried and free of obligations who sailed from the
German port of Bremen, and possibly Hamburg, and who may have been arrested
for some other crime and either transported or was sentenced to a long prison term.
Carl Feigenbaum, Marriott was soon to learn, is a perfect fit for this
unidentified suspect.

Marriott’s case against Feigenbaum
relies heavily on Lawton so he
gives the lawyer’s theory full play. He goes beyond Lawton, however, when, instead of just saying that Feigenbaum travelled
around Europe and the US, he adds a list of Ripper-like murders
that occurred throughout Europe
and the United States at a time
when Feigenbaum was still living in Germany and sailing between Europe and North America
on ships from Bremen:

October, 1889. Flensburg, Germany. Murder and dismemberment of a prostitute.

January,
1889. Managua, Nicaragua. Murder and mutilation of six
prostitutes.

Marriott
then adds to this list all of the Whitechapel victims starting from Martha
Tabram, excluding Elizabeth Stride and Rose Mylett, and points out that after
Feigenbaum’s execution reports of Ripper-like murders around the world stopped.

Marriott
concludes his case with these words:

“I
firmly believe that Carl Feigenbaum was Jack the Ripper and that his name will
now enter history as that of the world’s most notorious serial killer. For this
man was responsible for a series of horrific murders of poor, unfortunate,
helpless women on three continents over a period of six years and, after going
to his grave, evaded detection for over a century.” 24

A Critical look at Carl Feigenbaum.

Marriott
also writes:

“However,
there will be Ripper enthusiasts around the world who still will not be
convinced that the mystery is now solved, and never will be. To this small
minority, the Jack the Ripper case has become a part of their lives to the
point where they are now obsessed by the mystery.” 25

At the
risk of being tarred with this childish brush I hope that a critical look at
the candidacy of Carl Feigenbaum for being Jack the Ripper will be tolerated by
the readers.

Almost the
whole case against Feigenbaum rests with the testimony of William S. Lawton. If
it hadn’t been for Lawton,
nobody would even remember Feigenbaum today, let alone consider him a viable
candidate for London’s Jack the
Ripper. When looked at closely, however, Lawton’s theory offers some problems.

Lawton wrote of the confession: “When Feigenbaum was in the Tombs
awaiting trial I saw him several times. The evidence in his case seemed so
clear that I cast about for a theory of insanity. Certain actions denoted a
decided mental weakness somewhere. When I asked him point blank:

“‘Did you kill Mrs. Hoffman?’ he
made this reply:

“‘I have for years suffered from a
singular disease, which induces an all absorbing passion. This passion manifests
itself in a desire to kill and mutilate the woman who falls in my way. At such
times I am unable to control myself.’” 26

This statement is interesting for
several reasons. First, Lawton
states that he heard Feigenbaum’s “confession” when the prisoner was “in the
Tombs awaiting trial,” so, in other words, before the 26th of October, 1894, or very
early in a long legal process that would eventually stretch to April of 1896.

Second, according to Lawton the evidence against his client in
the murder of Juliana Hoffman was “so clear” that he was forced to look
at an insanity defence in order to try and save his clients life. In this
context we see that the “confession” conveniently offers Lawton exactly what he was desperately
looking for: evidence of insanity.

Feigenbaum suffered from a “disease,”
a “passion” which he was unable to control. Perhaps the open and shut case
wasn’t so open and shut after all…except that Lawton never used this defence. Not during the trial, not during the
appeal process and not, amazingly, when he and his co-counsel, Hugh Pentecost,
were trying to save their client’s life by trying to have him declared insane.
In fact Lawtonnever
told Pentecost that Feigenbaum had ever confessed to anything, let alone that
he had a “desire to kill and mutilate the women who fall in my way.” Lawton also never mentioned his growing
suspicion that Feigenbaum might be the Ripper, or any of his supposed
transatlantic research which turned suspicion into conviction. Supposedly it
never came up, even in passing, and was only revealed after the death of their client
- and then to a reporter. This strains the bounds of credulity to breaking.

In a revealing article that appeared
in the New York Times, Pentecost was asked about his co-counsel’s
theory. The lawyer stated “In Feigenbaum I found nothing in his homicidal
method to remind me of ‘the Ripper.’” 27

Pentecost also admitted that he
thought his client was guilty of the Hoffman murder and that he was insane but
was fairly adamant about Feigenbaum being Jack the Ripper: “I do not like…to
spoil a good story, but I take no stock in my colleague's story myself, while,
as to facts, Mr. Lawton, of course, is able to tell more than I, as I only knew
our client to talk to through an interpreter.”

This is another interesting point: Feigenbaum’s English
was either very poor or it was non existent. Pentecost could only speak to him
with the help of an interpreter and an interpreter had to be provided for
Feigenbaum during his trial. This point was also brought up by the Ann Arbor
Register which wrote “Mr. Lawton frequently conversed with Fiegenbaum (sic)
in English while the man was confined in the Tombs, but on every occasion when
anyone else was present — even today, when he declared his innocence to Warden
Sage—he demanded the assistance of an interpreter.” 28

Did Feigenbaum speak English only to Lawton as the Register
suggested or was this a mistake made trying to reconcile Feigenbaum’s lack of
English with Lawton’s story? Did Lawton speak German? If he
didn’t, it’s hard to see how Feigenbaum could have expressed his “all
absorbing passion” so cogently in pigeon English.

Pentecost stated that Feigenbaum “…wrote me some
excellent letters in German about his case when in prison,” and perhaps
more importantly, “the subject of the correspondence- the mythical Jacob
Weibel, whom he accused of the murder- was well treated.” Pentecost’s
opinion was that Feigenbaum spoke German and very little English, certainly his
client didn’t talk to him in English. It is difficult, to me at any rate, to
picture Jack the Ripper as non English speaking.

It is also important to note that rather than confess to
the murder of Juliana Hoffman, or any other murder for that matter, Feigenbaum
continued to insist to Pentecost that Jacob Weibel was the guilty man. It is
hard to see why the two counsellors, working together to try and desperately
save the life of their client, would have such different views of, and
information regarding, the same man.

It should also be emphasized that no one other than Lawton ever claimed
to have heard this confession or any corroborating evidence from England and Lawton never
revealed to anyone what the evidence was or exactly how he had come by it.

Although Feigenbaum was supposed to have traveled all
over the U.S. and Europe when Ripper-like murders took place, no evidence is
offered by either Lawton or Marriott proving that Feigenbaum was actually in
the locations of these murders on the appropriate dates. As a sailor,
Feigenbaum could have been anywhere in the world and merely stating that
Feigenbaum was much traveled isn’t evidence of anything. Of much more
importance is Lawton’s claim that Feigenbaum was in Wisconsin during a
series of mutilation murders of women there. This appears to be a lie. Not that
Feigenbaum was in Wisconsin, his brother admitted that he was, but that there was ever a
series of ripper-like murders there.

When I
first did research on Carl Feigenbaum several years ago I spent some time
looking for this supposed series of murders. I couldn’t find any evidence that
they ever occurred. In writing this article I returned to the problem once more
and still could find no reports of this supposed series. I did originally find
articles reporting the murder of a prostitute named “Lottie Morgan” in Hurley,
Wisconsin, in April, 1890, which was described as equalling “in horror any
of the Whitechapel crimes,” 29but
Morgan was shot and then killed by a blow to the head from an axe. This did not
suggest to me a Jack the Ripper murder. Marriott, however, states that the
Morgan murder might have been carried out by the Ripper. He then uses it to
support his theory that Feigenbaum is known to have visited locations where
Ripper-like murders took place. This is all very doubtful.

Hurley in
1890 was a rough and tumble iron mining and logging town with a bad reputation.
It was said that “the four toughest places on earth are Cumberland, Hayward, Hurley and Hell,” with Hell coming last.

Silver
Street in Hurley, off of which Morgan was found murdered, was lined with
saloons, beer parlours, pool halls and brothels. It was described by one
scandalized author as the “hardest street of the hardest town on the IronRange. Murder, robbery and every
violence and sin has been perpetrated... terrible sins have been locked in
chambers of iniquity, while much sin that would have veiled itself almost
anywhere else has boldly walked abroad on Silver street...” 30 Hurley,
therefore, was a place that was not immune to violent crime and murder.

More
importantly at the time it quickly became apparent that Lottie Morgan was
murdered because she knew too much about the robbery of the Iron Exchange Bank
of Hurley in October of 1889. The bank was robbed of $40,000 and two men,
Phelps Perrin, who worked at the bank, and Ed Baker, a local saloon keeper,
were arrested for the crime. Morgan was subpoenaed to testify at the first
trial but she quickly left town, only returning at a later date. She was
murdered soon after she had made cryptic comments to several people which
hinted at what she knew and before she could testify at the subsequent trials
of the two men.

Neither Lawton nor Marriott was able to prove that
Carl Feigenbaum was anywhere near Hurley, Wisconsin, on the
early morning of the 11th of April, 1890, when “Lottie Morgan” was murdered, other than the vague talk that
he had been in Wisconsin at
some time. Marriott points out that the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line ship
the S.S. Eider, sailing from Bremen, docked in the Port of New York on
the 9th of April and that “if Feigenbaum was on that vessel he
would have had ample time to get from New York to Wisconsin.” 31 This is clearly ridiculous as there was
no way in 1890 to get from New York City to northern Wisconsin in two days.

The so
called series of mutilation murders of women in Wisconsin appears to have been nonexistent. Lawton made the whole thing up. Worse, it’s a lie designed to add weight
to the theory that Feigenbaum was a Ripper-like serial killer. If Lawton had evidence of Feigenbaum’s guilt,
as he claimed, why did he have to bolster it with lies?

This must
also put in doubt Lawton’s
statement that his sailor/itinerant gardener client had special knowledge of
surgery and dissection. There is no other source for this information but it’s
just the type of thing one might say when trying to prove a suspect was Jack
the Ripper. After all, the general public believed that the Ripper, who ever he
was, was probably a doctor or surgeon. The American public had been told this
only seven months earlier when Dr. Forbes Winslow arrived in New York to chair the psychiatric section
of the International Medico-Legal Congress. “The Whitechapel murders were
committed by a medical student of good family,” he stated,“whose
mind was wrecked by study. His insanity took the form of religious fervor and
homicidal impulse. He was found and incarcerated in a penal asylum. No
anatomical murder occurred after this arrest.” 32

Feigenbaum, as far as is known, had no medical or surgical training, although
Pentecost stated that he had “no small amount of instruction,” and that
his“handwriting was better than you could expect from a practical
flower gardener.” This suggests some education but doesn’t prove any
medical background. However, it is suspicious that, once again, Lawton provides information about their
client that only he had knowledge of. Pentecost had heard none of it.

Lawton’s belief that the murder of Mrs.
Juliana Hoffman was a botched Ripper murder is also hard to credit. Hoffman was
murdered in her own apartment with her 16 year old son sleeping in the same
room only feet away. She wasn’t a prostitute picked up on a street corner but a
widow who Feigenbaum lived with for three days before he attacked her with a
knife. Robbery seems to be the obvious motive, although Lawton and Pentecost believed otherwise.
The door to the closet where Mrs. Hoffman kept some of her money was open, as
was the purse kept inside the closet. These were both closed when the Hoffmans
had gone to bed. Moreover, Feigenbaum, who had no money, was to pay his rent on
the day the murder/robbery took place. Supposedly he would be forced to leave
when he couldn’t pay so a robbery and disappearance while the Hoffmans slept
seems likely. If this was the case then perhaps Mrs. Hoffman awoke while
Feigenbaum was rifling her purse, screamed, and forced the ex-sailor to kill
her to keep her quiet. It is almost hard to imagine a more un-Ripper-like
crime.

But what
about connections between Feigenbaum and the murder of Carrie Brown, alias
“Shakespeare,” which had taken place in New York’s Lower East Side
on the 24th of April, 1891? 33 The Brown
murder was thought to have been committed by Jack the Ripper come to New York in order to prove his superiority
over the New York Police Department. Brown was strangled and then mutilated in
the East River Hotel by a man who was listed in the hotel’s register as “C.
Kniclo,” described as having a thick accent which was thought to have been
German.

Was this
Feigenbaum? Forgetting that his brother stated that Carl had arrived in the US in 1892 for a moment, and from the witness
description of “C. Kniclo” alone, the answer is no. The murderer of
“Shakespeare” was 5 feet 8 or 9 inches tall, thin, 32 to 35 years of age with a
light complexion, long thin nose, light coloured hair and a blond mustache.
Feigenbaum was only 5 feet 4 inches tall, thin, about 51 years of age in 1891
with a medium complexion, large, red nose, dark brown hair and mustache.

Marriott
states that the original description of the murderer of Carrie Brown is “questionable,
as the police at the time did not believe it was accurate.” 34 This is incorrect. In reality the NYPD
set great store by this description and all police bulletins during the
investigation, including those sent to other cities, made use of it. It is also
obvious that the vast majority of suspects pulled into the massive police
dragnet were tall, thin, blond haired men. As one newspaper wrote at the end of
the investigation “there have been dozens of light complexioned men with
long noses and blond moustaches placed under arrest in this and other cities.”
35

Marriott
also suggests that “the other possibility” is that “C. Kniclo” could
have left after he was finished with Brown and that she then could have gone
out again and found another client – Feigenbaum – who was actually her killer.
However, according to the rules of the East River Hotel, as explained at both
the inquest and trial of Ameer Ben Ali, although men could leave, women weren’t
permitted to once they had checked in with their “husband” for the night, this
so that the hotel wouldn’t get a reputation as a brothel. Brown, therefore,
couldn’t have gone out and picked up another client and then returned to the
hotel. She would not have been let out, let alone back in again.

The rest
of Lawton’s case against his
client is based on dubious observations. That Feigenbaum was “crafty,” or
pretended to be an imbecile, or supposedly had money and property while
feigning poverty, does not make him an international serial killer.

Marriott’s
case depends heavily on Lawton’s
but he adds his own evidence as well.

His
suggestion that Jack the Ripper may have been a merchant seaman is, of course,
not new. At the time of the Whitechapel murders Edward Knight Larkins, a clerk
in the Customs Statistical Department, annoyed anyone he could write to, or
buttonhole, that he believed that the murderer sailed to London aboard cattle boats which sailed
out of Portugal. He named three
ships: City of Oporto, City of Cork and the City of Malaga as having carried the murderer, or murderers, into London on, or just before, the dates of
the murders. His list of possible Rippers included cattlemen Manuel Crux
Xavier, Jose Laurenco, Joao de Souza Machado and J. Da Rocha. Dr. Forbes
Winslow also pointed to sailors who came into London on cattle boats as likely Ripper suspects. Another man who pointed
the finger at merchant vessels at the time of the murders was Mr. Charles
Barber who wrote to the authorities to point out, incorrectly, that the S.S.
Alaska was in port in Liverpool during every murder. Mr. Barber later believed that Frederick
Deeming, sailing aboard the Alaska, was the Ripper. More recently theorist Michael Conlon has stated
that National Line steamships were in port in London during each of the
murders and that this points the finger of guilt at his suspect Arbie La
Bruckman who was a cattleman working the ships of the National Line.

The point
is that although it is perfectly feasible that the Ripper could have been a
merchant seaman, there is no way to positively connect any sailor to the
Whitechapel murders simply because he worked for a shipping company which
docked one of its ships in London on the dates of the murders. Marriott
pinpoints the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line out of Bremen, although he doesn’t clearly explain why, and shows that Feigenbaum
sailed with this line. However, the NLL was a large shipping company
with dozens of ships, sailing steam lines around the world and with hundreds,
if not thousands, of sailors in its employ 36.
Worse, it is known that Feigenbaum also sailed with other shipping lines and
not always on boats out of Bremen. He therefore could have been anywhere in the world during the
Whitechapel murders. Unless you can show positively that Carl Feigenbaum, or
Anton Zahn, was in London
during each of the murders all you have is unsatisfactory speculation.

Where
Marriott goes beyond Lawton is in actually identifying several Ripper-like
murders that occurred around the world that he suggests might have been the
work of Feigenbaum, or at least that he might have had the opportunity to have
committed them. Unfortunately most of these murders, much like those of “Lottie
Morgan” and Carrie Brown already mentioned, seem to have absolutely no
connection with either Carl Feigenbaum or Jack the Ripper.

After the
Whitechapel murders ceased and the Ripper remained uncaught, newspaper reports
from around the world suggested that London’s unknown assassin had moved on to
greener pastures. Murders in Japan, Chile, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Mexico, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Britain, for example, were either seen as
the work of Jack himself, or were at least described as “like the Ripper’s
handiwork.” It seems that almost every woman, and some men, murdered with a
knife or edged weapon was considered one of Jack’s possible victims. This was
doubly true if the woman was a prostitute, no matter how she was killed.
Marriott, however, suggests that any murder described by newspapers as being
the work of Jack the Ripper and taking place in a location that might have some
connection to Feigenbaum is fair game for speculation. This is an unfortunate
trap.

To begin
with, Marriott could find no confirmation from Nicaragua of reports from the New York Sun of six prostitutes murdered
and mutilated in the capitol city of Managua in January, 1889. At the time of this writing no one, including
this author, has been able to find any evidence that this series actually took
place. Moreover, newspaper reports out of London in February, 1889, stated that the supposed Managua murders as well as a supposed
series in Jamaica were hoaxes.
Stephen Ryder has since discovered that the Jamaican Ripper murders never
happened. The “series” was actually a single murder that was quickly solved and
the murderer tried and executed. This fact must add credence to the hoax
report.

The
supposed murder and mutilation of a prostitute in Flensburg, Germany, a
northern port city near the Danish border, in October, 1889, fits in nicely
with the fact that Feigenbaum was German. Marriott also states that ships from
the Bremen Line docked here as well. News reports said that the victim had her
throat cut, her abdomen cut open and that her body was then dismembered.
However, this supposed Ripper-like murder also turned out to be a hoax. The
victim was a young girl and not a prostitute and she was killed in an accident
rather than being murdered. It was, once more, the New
York press which hoaxed the story by turning a tragic
event into a horrific murder and leaving German newspapermen to scratch their
heads in bewilderment. There was absolutely no connection with Jack the Ripper
or Carl Feigenbaum.

On the 4th of December, 1890, the body of
a peasant girl was found in a forest near Berne, Switzerland,
murdered and mutilated. There is no other information and no known connection
with Feigenbaum.

The murder
and mutilation of a woman in Beuthen 37,
Germany, on 27 April, 1891, causes some serious problems. Unfortunately the victim was not a prostitute but the wife of a
tailor named Imielaw (also, variously, Imielawa or Imlelaw) and she was having
an affair with a well connected surgeon named Dr. Kudelko. The cuckolded
husband was first arrested but released after he was able to give an account of
himself. It was during his examination that police learned that the victim was
having an affair with Kudelko who was then arrested. Since the woman was having
an affair with a doctor, and the wounds to her body seemed to have been “skillfully
executed,” and the fact that the victim’s face was attacked, possibly denoting
the work of someone who knew her, and her body was found just behind the
hospital where Kudelko worked, it is fairly obvious why this seems to be the
result of a lover’s triangle gone bad rather than Jack the Ripper wandering
a-field from his usual Whitechapel haunts. The Beuthen murder really creates
problems with Marriott’s theory in that he has the date wrong. He writes that
it occurred on the 28th of April, 1890, when in fact it happened on the 27th of April, 1891, or only
three days after the Carrie Brown murder in New York. Lawton used the
Brown murder as evidence that Feigenbaum was the Ripper, as does Marriott, so
it’s hard to jettison it from the theory in favour of the Beuthen murder.
However, if Beuthen was not a Ripper murder then it is evidence that
Ripper-like murders did occur, even in Germany, that had no connection with Feigenbaum. Catch 22.

On the 25th of October, 1891, a
prostitute named Hedwig Nitsche was murdered in a small
cellar room she used to entertain customers in the Holzmarkt Gasse, a street in
the northern part of the city of Berlin, Germany. She had
just entered the room with her client when he apparently attacked her with a
knife, causing her to scream and arouse the owner of the house. At almost the
exact same time another prostitute named Mueller, who also used the room,
arrived with a client and opened the door. The murderer was able to push past
Mueller, her male client and the landlady, a Mrs. Poetsch, and rush out of the
house with Mueller’s client in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, the man escaped.
Inside the blood stained room Hedwig Nitsche’s body lay
fully clothed on the floor with her throat cut and a long incision running from
the throat downwards. The murderer was described as being “about 20 years of
age, of middle height, and slightly built, with blonde hair and moustache.”
38 This was obviously not Carl
Feigenbaum. Marriott first states “In any event, there is no description
given.” 39 but later says
“…the description that was given of the suspected murderer does not match
Feigenbaum…But, as we know, the Ripper mystery is full of inaccurate and
misleading descriptions….” 40
This is hard to credit as the man first accosted several women in the area
before going off with Nitsche and the fact that Mueller, her client and Mrs. Poetsch
also got a good look at the murderer. As the description came from several
sources I would suggest that it can be deemed reliable and should not be airily
dismissed offhand simply because it embarrassingly pokes a hole in a pet
theory.

Because
Feigenbaum was known to have traveled around the United
States, and because Marriott is suggesting Feigenbaum
was the Ripper who killed wherever he went, “Ripper-like” murders that occurred
in the U.S. become important
evidence against the German sailor. Unfortunately, as we have seen, Marriott
has struck out at his first two times at bat, Morgan and Brown. What about his
next trip to the plate?

On the 31st of January, 1892, Mrs.
Elizabeth Senior, age 73, was murdered in her home in Millburn, New Jersey. The
body was found by her 70 year old husband who had been at work at his job as nightwatchman
at Fouratt’s hat shop. She had been slashed, or stabbed, in the throat then
stabbed eleven times in the chest. The murderer then calmly took his time
ransacking the house, as if he knew he wouldn’t be interrupted. Robbery was the
obvious motive. Another German, a man named August Lentz, was eventually
arrested for the crime. Lentz knew the Seniors and knew that the husband would
be away during the night as he had recently been fired from the same hat shop
that employed Mr. Senior. Lentz was also seen by more than one witness near the
Senior’s house close to the time of the murder although he denied even being in
Millburn that night. However,
he was also identified by a train conductor as a man who had got on the train at,
or near, Millburn and
immediately locked himself in the washroom for over an hour before taking his
seat. A New York lodging house
keeper also identified Lentz as the man who had changed his blood stained shirt
at his flophouse the day after the murder. In the end, there was insufficient
evidence to make the charges stick and Lentz was released.

To show
what type of psychotic and violent criminal Lentz really was, you need look no
further than his arrest in Summit, New Jersey, in
1909. The victim had taken pity on Lentz and befriended him. Lentz smashed his
“friend” in the head three times with a shovel, threw him down a flight of
stairs, hit him again on the head with a club and finally stabbed him.
Amazingly the man survived and Lentz was arrested. The reason for the murderous
attack? Lentz was attempting to rob the man. It should be obvious that August
Lentz was probably the murderer of Mrs. Senior and that he killed her in order
to rob her house.

Marriott
connects another murder in Berlin on the 3rd of April, 1892, with the Hedwig Nitsche murder of October, 1891. The 1892 murder
was that of a prostitute who was found strangled in the stairwell of a building
on Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse. The newspapers suggested, with no real evidence, that
the killer didn’t have time to mutilate the body. Marriott links this murder
with the earlier one by pointing out that “the victim was a prostitute and
was strangled.” 41 How the
strangulation connects with the throat cutting and mutilation of Nitsche is not
made clear. Unfortunately a second strangled woman was found in a sand pit in Charlottenburg, Berlin, in late September, 1892.42
This murder was connected at the time with the stairwell strangling and
suggests a strangler on the loose rather than a Ripper. Also it should be
remembered that if his brother was correct then Feigenbaum settled in America in early 1892 so was not
strangling women in Germany in
late September of that year.

Marriott’s
list of murders possibly carried out by Carl Feigenbaum includes victims who
were prostitutes, housewives, widows and a simple peasant girl. The weapons
used to kill were knives, for the most part, but also an axe and strangulation.
Most of the murders mentioned do not seem to have been carried out by
Feigenbaum, however, and some were press hoaxes which never happened. This is
the trap. Trying to connect a single suspect to the various ripper-like murders
that occurred around the world is a mug’s game. There were several Ripper-like
murders that were solved and men were executed or sent away for long prison
sentences because of the fact. There are also suspects in several “unsolved”
murders at which the finger of guilt can be much more comfortably pointed than
at someone like Feigenbaum. Once you can state that a Ripper-like murder was
definitely not carried out by Jack the Ripper, then doubt must fall on all the
rest because these types of murders did occur around the world and men who were
not Jack the Ripper were responsible for them.

Marriott
states that after Feigenbaum’s arrest in 1894 there were no other Ripper
murders. This is simply not true. Murders attributed to Jack the Ripper, or
that evoked his name and memory, continued around the world well into the next
century. Some, like the murder and mutilation of prostitute Sarah Martin in New York City in December, 1903, were
solved. Others, like the murder and mutilation of prostitute Francisca Hofer 43 in Vienna in December, 1898, were not. Using the wide latitude that Lawton and Marriott have used a case could
be made that both might be placed at the feet of Carl Feigenbaum…except for the
small matter that he was already dead.

Conclusions.

Was Carl
Feigenbaum Jack the Ripper? It seems unlikely. William Lawton’s word, on which
the whole case rests, cannot be trusted. A supposed confession was not shared.
The confessor refused to confess. Connection to Whitechapel, London, in 1888 has not been proved. A
series of mutilation murders in Wisconsin did not exist. Co-counsel, who knew the suspect, dismissed the
claims. The story quickly disappeared.

Marriott
suggests that Lawton is a
credible witness merely based on the opinion that if he was lying why didn’t he
go all out and claim that Feigenbaum had actually confessed to him that he was
the Ripper? For that matter, why would Lawton make up the story at all? What did he stand to gain by it? These
are questions that cannot be answered now. The answer depends upon the thinking
and character and personal circumstances of a man now long dead. All we can do
is examine Lawton’s words for
evidence of truth. The evidence is lacking.

Trevor
Marriott initially made a case for a German merchant seaman being Saucy Jack.
He then discovered Carl Feigenbaum, almost a perfect fit for his theory.
However, Marriott failed originally to show that the Ripper was a German
merchant seaman. The theory was plausible but not proven. Could the Ripper have
been a German sailor? Or an American sailor? Or a Portuguese sailor? Or a Malay
sailor? Of course. Could he have been a butcher, baker, tinker, tailor, beggar
man or thief? Of course. Could he have been Carl Feigenbaum? Not with the
almost complete lack of evidence that has been presented to support his
candidacy. Wishful thinking cannot solve this puzzle.

NOTES:

1) The Ann Arbor Register, 30 April, 1896. It is hard to see what is
meant by this. “Ganbickelheim, Alzel” seems to be a misspelling of Gau-Bickelheim,
Alzey. Gau-Bickelheim being a municipality in the district of Alzey-Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. “Hesse-Darmstadt” is a bit more
straightforward since it seems to refer to the City of Darmstadt which is in the German Federal State of Hesse. Although the two are
only about 25 miles apart they are still two different locations in two
separate States in Germany.

2) The Fort
Wayne News, 27 April, 1896.

3) John Blake Publishing Inc. 2007.

4) The New York Times, 29 April, 1896.

5) Although his real name was apparently
Zahn I have used the name Feigenbaum throughout. This is the name that has come
down in history to identify the murderer of Mrs. Hoffman; it was the name under
which he was prosecuted and it is the name that appears in the official
execution book for Sing Sing Prison.

6) The Chicago Daily Tribune, 2 September, 1894.

7) It is perhaps important to note that his
widowed sister, Magdalena,
seems to have lived about 55 miles or so north of Karlsruhe. See note 1.

8) The Chicago Daily Tribune, 28 April, 1896.

9) Ibid.

10) Ibid.

11) There is some confusion about the order
of the attack and the wound to the throat. Another version states that
Feigenbaum had cut Mrs. Hoffman’s throat just before she screamed, awakening
her son, then returned and stabbed her in the neck a second time. Another
report stated that after he had cut her throat he returned and stabbed her in
the chest.

12) The Brooklyn Eagle, 1 September, 1894.

13) This desperate tactic is possibly the
reason why the newspapers got hold of a story that Feigenbaum had seen the
ghost of William Caesar, a murderer, who died in the same cell he was then
occupying in Sing Sing prison.

14) Macdonald was the President of the New
York State Commission in Lunacy, Professor of Mental Diseases and Medical
Jurisprudence at the University-Bellevue Medical College of the City of New
York, Past Superintendent of the Auburn State Asylum for Insane Criminals and,
when that was relocated, the first Superintendent of Matteawan State Hospital
for Insane Criminals as well as the head of his own sanatorium located in the
salubriously sounding Pleasantville, New York.

33) Marriott incorrectly states that this
murder took place in Jersey City, New Jersey.

34) Marriott, 2007, page 340.

35) The Brooklyn Eagle30 April, 1891.

36) The Norddeutscher Lloyd Line did
run ships to London in 1888 as Marriott states but at the same time it ran
separate steamship lines to New York, Baltimore, Brazil and the River Plate,
Argentina, South Africa, Australia (with a branch line to the Samoan and Tonga
Islands), and the Far East (with a monthly service to China and a branch service
to Japan). All these lines had more than one ship running on them.

37) Marriott states the murder occurred in Benthen, Germany, and this town was incorrectly named in some news reports. The
murder actually occurred in Beuthen, in Prussian Silesia, near the Polish
frontier. Beuthen is now the Polish town of Bytom.